She even prescribed for herself with success, yet she was not a Spiritualist. She was a somnambulist, and, though weak enough when awake, threatened several times to pull the house down by her violence while in this condition. She had strength like a lion and no man could manage her. I saw the same thing in the hospital later.
This aunt is now healthy; not cured by her own prescriptions or the magnetic or infinitesimal doses of Dr. Arthur Lutze, but by a strong emotion which took possession of her at the time of my great-aunt’s death. She is not sorry that she has lost all these strange powers, but heartily glad of it.
When she afterwards visited us in Berlin, she could speak calmly and quietly of the perversion to which the nervous system may become subject if managed wrongly; and she could not tell how glad she was to be rid of all the emotions and notions she had been compelled to dream out. Over-care and over-anxiety had brought this about, and the same causes could again bring on a condition which the ancients deemed holy and which the psychologist treats as one bordering on insanity.
The old aunt was extremely suspicious and avaricious. Eight weeks after my arrival, she submitted to an operation. The operating surgeon found me so good an assistant that he intrusted me often with the dressing of the wound.
For six weeks, I was the sole nurse of the two, going from one room to the other both night and day, and attending to the household matters besides, with no other assistant than a woman who came every morning for an hour or two to do the rough work, while an uncle and a boy cousin were continually troubling me with their torn buttons, etc.
I learned in this time to be cheerful and light-hearted under all circumstances, going often into the anteroom to have a healthy, hearty laugh. My surroundings were certainly anything but inspiring. I had the sole responsibility of the two sick women—the one annoying me with her caprices, the other with her avarice. In one room, I heard fanciful forebodings; in the other, reproaches for having used a teaspoonful too much sugar. I always had to carry the key of the storeroom to the old aunt in order that she might be sure that I could not go in and eat bread when I chose. At the end of six weeks she died, and I put on mourning for the only time in my life, certainly not through grief.
In connection with the illness of my aunt I have mentioned Dr. Arthur Lutze. He was a disciple of Hahnemann, and I think a doctor of philosophy—certainly not of medicine. Besides being an infinitesimal homeopathist, this man was a devotee of mesmerism. He became very friendly towards me and supplied me with books, telling me that I would not only make a good homeopathic physician but also an excellent medium for mesmerism, magnetism, etc.
At all events, I was glad to get the books, which I read industriously, and he constantly supplied me with new ones so that I had quite a library when he left the place, which he did before my return. He, too, lived in Berlin, and inquired my residence, promising to visit me there and to teach me the art he practiced.
I remained with my aunt until late in the spring, when my health failed and I returned home. I was very ill for a time with brain fever, but at last recovered and set to work industriously to search for information in respect to the human body.
Dr. Lutze kept his word: he visited me at my home, gave me more books, and directed my course of reading. But my father, who had become reconciled to my inclination to assist my mother, was opposed to homeopathy and especially opposed to Dr. Arthur Lutze. He even threatened to turn him out of the house if I permitted him to visit me again, and burned all my books except one that I snatched from the flames.